This is the demo for Leander, a 1991 hack and slash platform game developed by Traveller's Tales and published by Psygnosis.

Yes, that Traveller's Tales, the same British mastermind behind the Lego video games dating back to Star Wars, a game phenomenal enough that at least one source—1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die—refers to it as one of the greatest games of all time. It is thus reminiscent of my experiences, from childhood and adolescence, with it and subsequent Lego games. It surely had a legacy, though I would argue it was too great a legacy. So many licensed Lego games over the next nearly two decades as of this writing would seek to imitate Lego Star Wars' formula. It makes sense from a marketing standpoint to try to mimic the original's demographic targeting, while also appealing to adults, but across the games with a high production value since, I see something composed of essentially the same ingredients, but with ever-changing arrangement and the stale ingredients sometimes getting replaced with fresh ones. I would not mind a little more originality here and there. Same sentiment toward today's Lego sets; I feel Lego should cut down on licensed intellectual property or at least boost efforts to create and sell original content.

I talked at length about Lego because of who created Leander (technically, the Atari ST conversion was by W.J.S. Design), but now I shall focus on this game, which happens to be Traveller's Tales' first. The demo, which consists of only the first level, states there are 22 levels in the full game. This demo is played with a joystick only. The player moves their character left or right, jumps, and crouches by turning the joystick in these directions and uses their sword to slash quickly with the fire button. Also, hold the joystick up to jump higher, and move it down while standing in front of an entrance to enter a room or, in this level, to exit via the teleporter, which can only be operated after picking up a key on the other side of the map. There are plenty of enemies to watch out for and avoid touching, most of which respawn. Some of the ones that spawn the first time drop coins upon death, and coins and health power-ups can also be found in chests. In the options for this demo, one can set the number of extra lives up to 7 on training difficulty, one of three difficulty levels, and the number of continues up to 3. Playing this game on hard difficulty reduces the extra life maximum to 3, and the player's character is given the weakest armor, purple, before death, rather than starting with black, the strongest. Raising the difficulty also makes the enemies require more hits to destroy.

The concept of blending hack and slash with platforming is rather original. The two genres complement, rather than detract from, each other here, leading to a platform game that emphasizes combat originating in Dungeons & Dragons. While the gameplay does not blow me away, it still feels like a smooth platformer with the said originality, and the graphics, however weaker in the Atari ST version compared to those in the Amiga original, are still above average. I realize the demo does not showcase all the game's features. In particular, it is not showcased what the coins or the bombs as displayed in the top-left user interface are used for. Regardless, Leander looks like an above average game, and the kind of game one would expect to pass Psygnosis' standards.

This game was obtained from one of the floppy disks for the 33rd issue of ST Format. It was then converted into an ST file for emulation. I learned that .TOS files in the AUTO folder on the floppy disk need to be renamed to .PRG if they are to be run on boot, which I have done in this case. This will be very handy for future uploads. Additionally, I found out that my troubles of getting the software to run on boot in the PCE emulator was due to the disk images using nonstandard formats. Previously, I would upload the files at as small a size as possible, while still fitting the games in, and for this emulator and for compatibility reasons, I am having to use the single-sided 360 KB. I went back to my previous Atari ST upload to fix the same problem for the same reasons.